IN-BOX.

That old-time music

April 18, 2004

Herbie Hancock bemoans the demise of jazz as he knew it and fears it is being shoved into the margins of American culture. ["Herbie's blues," March 21] He need not fear. It all depends on how one defines "jazz."

What is being diminished are the mindless, melody-less displays of instrumental technique and wizardry that so many people today call "jazz," and I daresay Mr. Hancock is part of that. But God's music, traditional New Orleans jazz, is still around and flourishing. In fact, in this area we have one of the country's great jazz clubs, the Illiana Club of Traditional Jazz, with 1,100 members from the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana, and its monthly Sunday concerts at the Glendora Ballroom in Chicago Ridge.

Ted Utchen / Wheaton

Defending Norah

I find it ironic that, in an article in which he quotes Hancock railing against critic Leonard Feather for, essentially, telling Hancock what kind of music he should play, Reich took a jab at Norah Jones for her "retro" and "unadventurous warblings," saying that she is not a "real jazz musician."

Norah Jones is a singer/songwriter/pianist who has a beautiful, distinctive voice, writes beautiful little tunes and accompanies herself with simple, tasteful piano. What, precisely, is "retro" about that? Perhaps if critics like Reich would embrace beauty for beauty's sake instead of innovation for innovation's sake, jazz and classical music would not be the struggling musical forms that they are today.

Robert Druzinsky / Glenview

Subtracting the Sum

Leah Eskin's column, Sum of the Parts, is the first thing I turn to each Sunday morning. So imagine my dismay when I read her farewell column on March 21.

I've thoroughly enjoyed her fresh and original writing and am extremely disappointed to see that you're losing one of the best features of the Sunday Tribune. And as a non-cook, it's little comfort to know she'll be writing the [Magazine's] food column!

Kate McPolin / Saugatuck, Mich.

Change is not good

It was with shock and dismay that I read the editor's note at the bottom of Leah Eskin's column. I will no longer have the delicious experience of reading her wonderfully witty words on the last page of the Magazine.

Every Sunday, the highlight of reading the paper was turning to this final page, drinking in Eskin's weekly world of deft observations summing up the simplest parts of life and making lovely, funny and, at times, profound sense.

She writes that change is good and even inevitable, but it sure feels foisted on me.